Painting Elective.

Its the weekend already and the first week in painting is gone.   Wow that was fast.   On Monday we all spoke about the images on our boards.   We also had a slide show that showed the work of Contemporary Artists.    On Tuesday we were given a brief to pick a 2d or 3d work of art and to respond to it in the form of an installation.   This was to be ready by Thursday.   On Tuesday afternoon we did a painting work shop where we did a blind painting exercise, painting with card and painting the negative spaces.    I found it hard to get my head around painting the negative spaces but overall I enjoyed the workshop a lot.

Wednesday saw most of us trying to put our response to our work of art together.   I picked Henry Moore's 'Mother and Child with petal skirt' as my subject and this is how I responded to it.  

I used tin foil, tumble dryer pipe and stocking in the construction of this piece, what I wanted to convey was the unbroken link between the mother and child, the chord and how as a mother you never really cut that bond or link.  Of course physically it happens at birth but emotionally and mentally its always there, I suppose that's love.   Anyway this is far too deep, easily known its the middle of the night and I can't sleep.   However my construction was too sculptural, and not interesting enough to paint, so I responded again, this time to the pleating element and this is what happened.  
Contextually I was looking at the work of Thomas Hirschhorn.

Here I used brown paper, tin foil and various types of chord and string.   I pleated the paper and used it to build a structure out from the wall.   My first installation.

On Friday we had the best fun yet, we were to interpret our installation in paint.  We did blind paintings of it first, then thumb nails of the areas we wanted to paint.   We were using palette knives and our colour palette was a self mixed black with four other tints of the colour blended with white.   It got somewhat frustrating when the paint wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, but it didn't take from the fun of it.   This is what happened, my two finished results.

My homework for the weekend is to copy a Lucien Freud portrait colour for colour, brush stroke for brush stroke, sounds like fun doesn't it.   Not sure my attempt will be very Freudesk but tune in to see what happens. I promise I will post my appropriation whatever happens!  

Friday 13th January, 2012


Hi Friends, hope everyone is feeling better now that the assessments are over.   Its been an odd week in college.   Strange having no studio work to do.   Calm before the storm I think.   Monday sees the start of Electives, my first one is Painting, so this afternoon I spent some valuable time in the library.   Grainne and Sylvia asked us to think about images that excited and inspired us during our 1st semester and to collect some of them for a pin board.     I was looking at the drawings of Henry Moore, in particular his series from the underground.    Why do I like these you may ask.   Well that's easy, while doing the life drawing classes I was very keen on a way of working that Riosin described as drawing from the inside out, looking at where the model's weight was, how she was connected to the space around her.    So when I was drawing I imagined I was making her out of wire or clay and tried to convey that in the marks I was putting on the page.   When I look at Henry Moore's drawings I get that same sense.

Below are some of my favourites.

'Woman seated in the underground' Henry Moore

The other Artist I will be putting on my pin board is Claude Heath, again another practise we employed in life drawing was blind drawing and it was something I enjoyed quite a lot.   Claude Heath's work has a lovely sense of freedom about it and yet you get the feeling that he is mapping his way around what he is drawing,  not missing anything knowing his subject intimately capturing every detail with his line.    

 Here are some examples of his work.







Hi everyone, back again, my project tonight was to experiment with food colouring, acrylic paint, spices and sugar.   Towards the end I decided to add fabric into the mix as well.  I started by making sugar syrup as you would if you were making sorbet or making sugar strands.  Then I added yellow food colouring,turmeric, and acrylic and poured it on to the page.   After swirling it about and letting it have a life of its own I added red food colouring leaving it to bleed its way into the yellow syrup.   This is what I ended up with.


                                                  


                                         



                                                  

At this stage the sugar syrup was getting very thick so I added more water to it to thin it out, next I poured it on to a page and added more colour to it.   Once it hits the page it starts to cool and solidify so you can kind of manipulate it.

In these ones I have kept some of the yellow and just added blue.

Again as it gets thicker I have added more water and used it thinner.

While I was playing around with these ones I forgot to take it off the heat and the syrup started to caramelise and go dark brown, it also smelled just like toffee.  Below are the darker results.  The upper part of these have that fudge colour and I have added blue,black, red food colouring and acrylic paint to the bottom.

Just as I was about to finish I wondered what would happen if I added fabric into what I had already done.    Again as in a previous project the work of Annette Messagner came to mind and I was looking at how she used netting and sheer fabrics in her work creating a veil.    I like the idea, but here I'm not using it to hide anything just to add another dimension and to see how it reacts with the wet sugar syrup.

This is what it looks like.

If you'd like to try this, its very simple, just sugar and water.    However I would would advise caution because the sugar syrup gets very very hot and can burn  skin very badly, so be careful.

Hi Folks, just off phone to friend Catherine, she text me to say she was melting plastic in her oven in the pursuit of a particular affect for her art and here was I at home in the kitchen melting wax on the stove and mixing it with paint.     I know Health and Safety would never let me do this in college and its probably not a great idea for home either, but I couldn't help myself.   Just had to do it.
This whole idea came when I was melting my wax stitches and looking at the traces they left behind.  At the particular time I did that, I played around with the hair dryer, acrylic paint and wax to see what would happen.    Tonight I decided to play with it again but this time I used the stove instead.    I also used different paints and inks, some with more success than others.   The down side was the smell and the aroma that filled the kitchen wouldn't win any culinary award, but a man has to do what a man has to do, you know what I mean!
Anyway below are some of the results.


These ones are all done with the hair dryer, wax and acrylic.

                                         

These were cooked on the stove with oils and wax.

Again on the stove, a recipe with acrylic.

These were done on the stove with ink, nearly had a fire with this one, note scorch marks.

I really enjoyed this experiment and I had lots of fun doing it.   However I think I should leave you with something I've often heard and always wanted to say 'Don't try this at home' or maybe anywhere else either.